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GeekNights 20110419 - 7 Wonders
Tonight on GeekNights, we review 7 Wonders, a fairly solid Antoine Bauza boardgame. Also, Scott geekbites Ace of Spades, and Armenia chooses chess as a component in national education.
- Rym's Thing - Hobo Nickels
- Scott's Thing - Pica Pic
Comments
However to be fair almost all Tiger Electronics are shit and should never be played.
X-Men, Sonic 2, Home Alone, Aladdin, Street Fighter 2, there were tons of good Tiger LCD games. Every bit as good, if not better, than Game & Watches.
1. What way does my wonder want me to play?
2. What way does the first round of cards seem to lean me towards and what resources are the people around me getting?
3. What are the people doing next to me and how can I deny them the cards they need? (either by burning them in the wonder or playing them if I have nothing better to do.)
If I actually pay attention to these, I win. Only time I lost was I had a wonder that wasn't working well with the cards I was getting and the player that won had no interaction with me to my right or left.
You can go really off the wrong way if you pick a path to victory that your wonder doesn't work with. Kinda like in Race to the Galaxy if you choose to ignore your starting world.
Even if your not going to the event or running the event, I enjoy hearing about it as a reminder.
- Going back to the discussion on using play to enhance education, there is some great studies on the use of role playing at a young age. Some researchers at a university in Denver created a classroom program around it called "Tools of the Mind" if anyone wants to look it up. Basically, students are instructed through make-believe type play, but instead of the freeform creativity that tends to break down after five minutes, students must pick a role, draft a "play plan" (a list of their objectives/motivation) and then act out that character for at least a half hour, maybe longer.
This is shown to have drastic effects in ramping up speech development as it forces them to use words to explain themselves, and gets them out of their vocabulary comfort zone. It also piggybacks on those Jane McGonigal theories that when the mind is at play, it is receptive to learning. I read about all of this in a book called Nurture Shock which was a fantastic read for anyone who is interested in science and society, even if you don't have kids or aren't planning on them. Here's the one line synopsis "Society's most popular strategies for raising children are in fact backfiring because key points in the science of child development and behavior have been overlooked." The two researchers who wrote the book are basically the Mythbusters of behavioral science, and they back their shit up.
- Scott could only steal the Sphynx's nose if he was Carmen Sandiego
- I'm happy to hear that 7 Wonders is more of a warmup game because I've held off on buying it. Since I already have enough of these types, I probably never will purchase it now, so that's a few dollars saved. Zooloretto is definitely one of my favorite warmup games (and one of the first games I ever felt I'd totally solved), but rather than for warm up, I have been using it to slowly wean non-gamers or casual gamers onto beefier titles. We have a few couples friends who have gone from board game haters to players of Ticket to Ride and Zooloretto.
Next I'm going to try bumping it up to Aquaretto, which while it is no El Grande or T&E, is an incremental step up from Zooloretto in complexity. In Aquaretto, you are forced to define your own pen structure and size, so if you don't plan smartly the game will kick you in the nuts. There's also a little worker placement thing towards the end where you can choose some score modifiers. A little planning ahead to benefit from one or two of these also goes a long way.
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*I went to school in the 90s, and on a different continent, so I have only a vague idea of what Oregon Trail is, but you seemed to think it's good for developing kids. (What I know about OT is roughly: "It's a text-based strategy/"management sim" where you play a family traveling to Oregon from the eastern seaboard. And people can get dysentery.")
Also http://www.virtualapple.org/oregontraildisk.html
I think it's a fun addition to the game. My friends and I normally play it whenever we hang out. It's another random element that if used properly can help you win. There are a lot of different leaders from history to choose from, so you'll have to keep referencing back to the book if you don't know what the symbols are.
I had to listen to the podcast again to figure out a better way to win. I think I will try going the green card/technology route next time and concentrate less on military.
From my experience with the game, military is not a very good route to put time into. It maxes out at 18 victory points, whereas going with technology or monuments (or whatever the blue cards are) tends to net higher. Especially with technology if no one else goes that route, you can clean up.